Happy New Year. This is now the year of the Monkees. Louren's school had a good celebration, I ate an appropriately themed buffet, and the day was capped off with an edifying episode of Stanley in which we, the audience, learn a valuable lesson about work-life balance: it's okay to disappoint your cute daughter, Jane, by canceling a family trip for something stupid and work-related so long as your daughter's friends can get advice from a talking Goldfish on how to cheer her up.

Spoiler Alert: If you don't want me to give away the ending of a 15-minute children's cartoon on the Disney Channel, stop reading now.

I like the way Stanley and Co. go back to Ancient China and don't interact with any Chinese people or even the locale. It is like they all read The Sound of Thunder.

That wasn't much of a spoiler, was it? To be honest, I just think that spoiler alerts are funny. Its a bit like shouting, "Don't look at this!"